At a certain point, these statistics become largely meaningless because there are so many “this hasn’t happened since” and “this has never happened before” moments occurring every month that documenting them becomes an exercise in futility.
Suffice to say shit’s going up and it’s been going up for quite some time. One of these fun, headline-grabbing “ever” stats that’s making the rounds on Monday comes from Ryan Detrick, senior market strategist at LPL Financial, who notes the following:
One other amazing streak may take place at Monday’s close: The S&P 500, should it return at least -2.99%, will officially have gone 242 trading days (about 11.5 months) without a 3% correction, topping the record of 241 days set in 1995. If we jinx it and the S&P 500 falls 3%, we apologize … but the last time the S&P 500 closed down more than 3% the day after making a new all-time high was in November 1991, and the index has made 474 new highs since then without a 3% drop the following day.
Well Ryan, you didn’t “jinx it,” although stocks did close red which, again, isn’t supposed to happen.
CNBC had some fun commentary about this streak today which you can listen to below – do note that Sully starts out with a lie by claiming that CNBC viewers are “the smartest audience on TV” which is about like walking into the Oval Office and saying “because you’re the smartest ‘fucking moron’ that’s ever sat in that chair”…
So there’s that. Three bobble heads and some dramatic music.
Also worth noting, FANG stocks have fallen for five straight sessions – the longest streak since just before the election:
Cramer’s acronym FANG (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Goggle) sounds like those stocks have something in common – other than occasionally being up at the same time, being on the internet and quasi “tech” stocks, they are software and internet (all common tech now) based and all are over priced based on earnings (http://www.investors.com/ibd-data-stories/what-do-fang-stocks-facebook-amazon-netflix-and-google-have-in-common/). They aren’t very related at all. Not too unlike BRIC stocks a while back – which weren’t even regionally or linked as the top developing nations for a period of time.
Other than saving a few electrons and some keyboarding calories (typing FANG – instead of “over priced stocks”) – this kind ill considered acronym is a meaningless labeling. It only creates a label(s) for the user, and not a flattering one(s). A social media, an entertainment renter, an advertising search engine, and an online retailer are about as different as you can get when considering the market mechanisms driving their successes. Only Cramer would group them – because they were up during a similar time period. That takes us back to H’s well thought out article on “What’s In A Label?” yesterday. We should all read it again.